Overall, I think they have a lot of promise. For the sake of being thorough, I'll go through by each group with some crits.

Grunt line: The first one and the one below that feel the strongest to me. They have a more confidently brutal pose to them than the others. The fifth one that is barely drawn in seems to have some promise to it as well, but I think I'd like to see his swords being held downward rather than up. It just strikes me as a more ready for blood pose. The second and third seem to be the weakest in this group. To put it plainly, they have no personality. The first one looks feral and angry, the one below that looks cocky and ready for a fight. The barely sketched one has a stance that looks like he's about to attack.

That second and third one however look like someone just stole their pudding more than their lives are on the line. The second one has a mix of tense and relaxed positioning to him. The fist shaking? Good. However his other arm appears to simple be resting on the sword which makes the fist shaking look very half hearted. Add to it his face is just kind of this blank half asleep look, there's just not a lot going on with him. The third one looks like he's halway into a good pose, but you depicted him while he was still getting there. If you'd make his arm on the right stretched out like he's grabbing something or pointing, and made his sword arm reared back further, then he'd have a more clear intent to him. At the moment however, he reminds me of a scooby-doo villain chasing around Shaggy and Scooby. His heart just isn't in it.

Assassin line: The first portrait seems a little stiff and forced to me. His torso seems a bit flattened, and its messing with his perspective and overall stance in general. I think if you his torso just a little more towards his throwing knives side, he'd show off a lot more depth and would look more natural. I like the second one however. Gives me a middle eastern assassin type feel. Very loose and swaggering, but ready to cut someone.

Archer Line: I like these the most. The first one has a lot of personality to him, and his pose seems the most natural of all of the portraits posted at the moment. Not much to crit on him till he gets colored. The second one looks pretty believable as well, but I wish his face would have the growl that some of the grunts show. The rest of his body looks like he's ready to whip that crossbow up at any moment and shoot someone, but his face just doesn't reflect it.

Overall my concern is that these mostly look like loyalists with apish faces, instead of overly muscular battle hardened man beasts. I thought I remembered earlier portrait work posted somewhere around here of orcs drawn more to the stature of The Incredible Hulk. There was one in particular of a grunt that screamed this idea. Not to say yours are badly drawn or don't look muscular. You may obviously even disagree and discount this crit entirely if you wish. I just think that by and large, these don't have enough to differentiate them from the look of the loyalists in physique.

I simply loved them! For my eyes they're each full of charachter, really great linework there. I can only say that the second orcish archer has strikingly long arms - apart from that I'll be looking forward to how these fellas turn out

Wow! That's a great dump of art! I like how all of them feel conncted and all of a piece. It seems to be a good idea to make all the sketches at once to achieve that, perhaps I'll borrow that approach for my next projects

But for some more detailed comments:

Grunt-line:
I love how much detail you put in all those costumes! All those padded and layerd leather armour variants feel like belonging to the same culture. All of them work for me, my favourites being the top left and the one below that.
The second one's torso could stand to be more defined and the front shoulder should be further out. The third one seems off balance and the rear arm is too big. I'm curious how no 5 will turn out - he looks very promising!
I don't have a problem with the second one's gesture - I think on the contrary that it is fine to have orc portraits that aren't raging and feral for certain dialogue situations. Not all dialogue presents orcs as non-stop angry. I hope you don't chose to follow Valkier's suggestion to make them Hulk-like beefy - a bit more hefty along the line of the first and fourth one would work well for the grunt line, but a lot more would make them embarassing and Marvel-like. I like that they are distinctly non-human with their distincty shaped skulls and elongated limbs but still very believable as another kind of humanoid.
Assassins: I like their personality! And it is great that one can see how there are differently build orcs and how that affects their status and position within orcish society.
All those little deatils in the L1 work great, but I think the bandages on his right arm don't follow the arm's form.
The L2 is great, too! His sickles are really badass and the gesture is simply perfect. But I'm not convinced by his mask at all. It looks like a venetian carnival mask to me and not orc-like at all. If you want to give him a mask instead of mummery you should try something more in line with the rest of the orcish equipment.
Archers:
I love the long and slender muscular arms these guys have! No crit at all for the L2. But perhaps play a bit with the L3's expression like Valkier suggested.

But again: generally wow! You've aleady defined the look of one of the most prominet factions in Wesnoth and I think this new project is about to turn out even better
And do you plan to take care of the Leader line, too?

The top left Grunt captured best my idea of the orcish build : broad-shouldered with long muscular arms and a slightly hunched posture. I'll align the other portraits on this one when I get started on orcs.

Top middle Grunt : Valkier's right. I'll fiddle with his posture so as to achieve a cool attitude that still conveys underlying threat. I'll also widen his shoulders and work on his face

Top right Grunt : agreed, this one requires many changes, if not a complete startover. Both arms will have to be repositionned in order to achieve a better posture, plus I'm not convinced by his helm.

Bottom left grunt: this one has a simmetry problem which requires a fix of his right shoulder and repositionning of the hands. I'll also get rid of the arrow stack, which diesn't ass much to the picture.

There's also a sixth Grunt project, not shown yet.

Assassins : in addition to what Valkier noticed, I'll work on the Slayer's mask (it is indeed a replica of a venitian mask and I have to admit that it just doesn't work with the overall picture)

Archers : the L2 is the one that has the most human-like build. I'll widen his shoulders and chest, in addition to reasonably beefing up his arms. The L3 has a bit of a scale problem in the head & shoulder region ; if I move his left arm to the right, closer to the shooting end of the crossbow, he will look more broad-shouldered.

Leader line : I didn't give it any thought yet as it is seldom used as far as I know - I only ever saw the unit in a single scenario of the Legend of Wesmere campaign and it doesn't even have dialog. If I'm mistaken I'll come up with a couple more linearts, but my main focus would still be the Grunt Line.

It'll be a while before I come up with modified orc lines. If you notice anything that hasn't been mentionned yet, feel free to kick in.

I wouldn't make the leader line a huge priority - it doesn't show up in many places without a character-specific portrait. But giving it portraits will inevitably see it used more, for variety's sake if nothing else.

thespaceinvader wrote:I wouldn't make the leader line a huge priority - it doesn't show up in many places without a character-specific portrait. But giving it portraits will inevitably see it used more, for variety's sake if nothing else.

It's a chicken and egg problem. I actually think one of the reasons they haven't gotten a lot of use in the past is due to the grunt line having a portrait, and the leader line not having one. This is nonsensical for a unit intended to be used as a speaking character.

thespaceinvader wrote:I wouldn't make the leader line a huge priority - it doesn't show up in many places without a character-specific portrait. But giving it portraits will inevitably see it used more, for variety's sake if nothing else.

It's a chicken and egg problem. I actually think one of the reasons they haven't gotten a lot of use in the past is due to the grunt line having a portrait, and the leader line not having one.

Partly, yes, but I think that's actually a good thing in this case. IMO, the leader line would be best remaining limited to representing the head of the great horde of the orcs, not just some generic leader. If it'd get widely used as just a generic leader, I think it'd need to be somehow wired in as an alternative branch of the grunt line instead of kept as a completely separate line.

These are my thoughts on the subject. This is just my opinion, and because LordBob is doing all the work, and doing good work, he can basically overrule me if he doesn't have a desire to go in the direction I'm suggesting. That's the carrot - this is a free project, and he gets to ultimately do what he likes, like kitty does. We definitely appreciate concessions towards our opinions, but we're not gonna refuse any good art based on them (i.e. we're not insane).

Thoughts:
Biologically, most of these look pretty nice, but with the orcs, I think one major thing is that we shouldn't make them nearly this ornate. The equipment on level-1 troops should look outright shoddy; it should look terrible. Only the L1 grunts would be able to get any sort of decent equipment; moreover they would probably bully anything decent away from their smaller cousins.

Orcs grow and mature a bit faster than humans, and they have an abysmally low lifespan due to being killed; generally in the teens (at which point they're about full-grown). If they're not being killed by humans, they're being killed by each other. Humans in wesnoth, like the real world, generally live to about 30-50, unless they have access to good medicine (like magi and nobility), in which case it's more like 50-80. Quite a number of real-world human groups lived in squalor, and died at about the age of 20; the orcs are analogous to this.

Orcs aren't a caricature of brutality, but they really are dramatically different from humans, in that they aren't normally at peace, followed by occasionally bouts of fighting over resources (as can be seen in any group of tribal humans). With humans, we usually get all artsy and decorate and embellish our stuff during that time. Orcs are under a lot more pressure (almost exclusively from other orcs) for resources, and I just can't see them having as much desire to embellish as humans do, and definitely not as much time. Once something is functional, I'd think they'd usually leave it because time is pressing for other stuff - mostly getting food.

Amongst other things, orcs are almost always starving, except for the grunts, because they reproduce too fast and there's not enough food to go around (only so much game to hunt, plants to forage. Spare time is spent getting more food. Agriculture is not done because it's too fragile and some other orc will take it (if nothing else, the underlings would eat most of the stuff they make - it just wouldn't work). This is a huge part of why orcs have developed such a culture of fighting and competition; because they're so pressed for food. When an orc is sufficiently starved, he'll get desperate and will fight for something to eat. The promise of plundered food is the most common call to arms.

This would mean that a lot of their equipment is 'functional but war-torn'; if some cloth is shredded, they'd just ignore it. They'll usually only patch or fix stuff when it really becomes a serious functional problem. Most of their weapons will be really beaten up, they'll only be patched by the more clever orcs who realize it's hard to replace. With stuff being plundered all the time, it's generally not. The result of all this is that they're a society that mostly plunders, and doesn't make much from scratch. Totally left to themselves, in an isolated place, they'd probably be an easter-island-like ecological disaster - they'd probably just consume everything, and wipe-out entire species of stuff they use.

What happens in wesnoth is an ongoing cycle of bloodshed - the orcs overpopulate, they try to attack elves, humans, and dwarves for food (trolls are allies because trolls aren't edible, being made of rock and all). The elves humans and dwarves usually get angry enough that they'll campaign against the orcs and kill tons of them, but they'll never really wipe them out entirely, and after a few decades, the orcs have exploded in numbers again, the humans/etc have gone through about a generation of their own, and aren't personally familiar with how bad the problem is, and they haven't been vigilant at exterminating them. When their population explodes, the orcs usually don't have enough cohesion to ever seriously threaten humans/elves/etc, but the few peripheral losses of life do anger them enough to react against the orcs. This will presumably keep on happening until some group gets so incredibly pissed that they really do manage to exterminate all of the orcs, permanently. Basically orcs are like a plague of locusts, rats, or rabbits that keeps coming back intermittently - except they're in mostly human form.

It's not a moralization or Aesop about anything; it's just a simple background idea that makes everything fit and make sense.

If nothing else, it's a way of both keeping our orcs as monsters, instead of nerfing them, but also making them interesting. Tragic, even.

I rather like (and share) your analysis of wesnoth orcs, so there'll be some massive line revisions before I do any shading. I won't be changing their overall armour design, because I would like to keep it visually different from shoddy loy stuff, and giving them strictly functional-but-war-torn equipment would result in something not very different from Kitty's Outlaws. In that respect, the eastern-ish armour design works well enough. Nevertheless, I really do not have any objection toward patching, dirtying, tearing...And any other -ing words that'll make their equipment a terrible mess. To be honest, it'll be just great adding this step into the design process !

I like where this is going. I was already planning to add some wear and tear in the shading phase, but you deserve a friendly warning that I consider this a blank cheque for going crazy with rust, dust and rags !

Ludivine : the idea of the slayer wearing a mask was indeed inspired after 300's Immortals. You got your facts right !

I'd see orcs' stuff as being generally functional and well-maintained, but without regard for appearances (other than possibly camouflage) as befits and almost entirely martial culture. So patches, dirt etc would be fair game, but probably not rust, since that would impair the functionality of the armour. In general, nothing that looks too perfect, and nothing that serves only a decorative purpose, like tabards. They do all have cloaks though, which I guess serve a military purpose, probably as bedding and rain-proofing.

I won't get too heavy with the rust, but the way we describe them, I don't see a grunt bothering with a few patches of rust. He'll likely worry if it starts to reduce the protection his armour offers, or restricts his movement, but hardly any time before.

Anyway, time for some finalized lineart : the first grunt only had a few nitpicks to deal with, whereas I started the second one all over. I daresay his posture is a lot more orcish now. Both are ready for shading.